oracknows | March 24, 2013There are many fallacies that undergird alternative medicine, which evolved into "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), and for which the preferred term among its advocates is now "integrative medicine," meant to imply the "best of both worlds." If I had to pick one fallacy that rules above all among proponents of CAM/IM, it would have to be either the naturalistic fallacy (i.e., that if it's natural—whatever that means—it must be better) or the fallacy of antiquity (i.e., that if it's really old, it must be better). Of course, the two fallacies are not unrelated. In the minds of CAM…
oracknows | March 21, 2013I don't always blog about stories or studies that interest me right away. Part of the reason is something I've learned over the last eight years of blogging, namely that, while it's great to be the firstest with the mostest, I'd rather be the blogger with the mostest than the firstest. I've learned this from occasionally painful experience, although I'd be lying if I didn't admit that in part this is a rationalization for the fact that I have a demanding day job that keeps me from jumping all over stories and studies of interest in the way that some bloggers can. There's also the simple fact…
oracknows | March 20, 2013Heidi Stevenson amuses me.
The reasons are legion. Be it the time when Heidi lectured scientists on anecdotal evidence (which she values far more highly than scientists, of course, declaring it the "basis of all knowledge"); launched a vile and nonsensical attack on Stephen Barrett; argued against prior plausibility with using a straw man argument so massive that if it were set on fire (which she did) it could be seen from space; or made an even more idiotic argument to try to "prove" that wi-fi signals and EMF cause autism, Heidi never fails to deliver the stupid in mass quantities of black…
oracknows | March 20, 2013This will be an uncharacteristically short (for Orac) post.
A couple of months ago, I wrote about the sad story of a young man from Ireland named Seán Ó'Laighin diagnosed with an inoperable brainstem glioma at age 19. Even more sadly, this young man heard about the Burzynski Clinic in Houston and believed the claims of its founder, Stanislaw Burzynski, that being treated with antineoplastons would provide him with a much greater chance of survival than anything conventional medicine had to offer. As has been the case for so many patients of Stanislaw Burzynski, Seán and his family started…
oracknows | March 19, 2013I've had a rule of thumb for a while that helps me identify quacks with a high degree of accuracy. It's not very sensitive, as a lot of quacks don't exhibit this trait, but it's very specific. A lot of quacks don't use the term; so not hearing says nothing about a practitioner. If you hear someone using this term, however, it's at least 99% likely that he is a quack. At least.
I'm referring to the word "dis-ease."
You see it everywhere. Instead of using the word "disease," quacks will often use the word "dis-ease" instead. Basically, the idea (apparently) is to choose not to empower health…
oracknows | March 17, 2013I know I dump on a website known as The Thinking Moms' Revolution (TMR), but I do so with good reason. Given what a wretched hive of antivaccine scum and quackery that website is, rivaling or surpassing any antivaccine website I can think of, even the blog equivalent of the great granddaddies of wretched hives of antivaccine scum and quackery, the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), and, of course, Age of Autism. As a result, increasingly I've been taking more and more notice of this (not so) Thinking Mom's Devolution. As a result, I became aware of a particularly egregious piece of…
oracknows | March 15, 2013It's been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time.
Besides indulging my taste for shamelessly working lyrics from Led Zeppelin and other classic bands into my post, what am I talking about? Simple. Things have been way too serious lately. I mean, just look at yesterday's post. Sure, I framed it semi-humorously, with The Evil Skeptics infiltrating the screening of the Burzynski sequel, but part of the reason that I did that is because the subject matter is so unrelentingly depressing. That's why when a reader sent me a link to the victim target subject of…
oracknows | March 13, 2013Film producer Eric Merola seems to think that there is a conspiracy of skeptics (whom he calls The Skeptics) hell bent on harassing his hero, Brave Maverick Doctor Stanislaw Burzynski. According to his latest film Burzynski: Cancer Is A Serious Business, Part 2 (henceforth referred to as Burzynski II, to distinguish it from Merola's first Burzynski movie, to which I will refer as Burzynski I), there is a shadowy cabal of Skeptics out there just waiting to swoop down on any Burzynski supporter who has the temerity to Tweet support for him, any cancer patient being treated by Burzynski who…
oracknows | March 12, 2013With very limited exceptions, chelation therapy is, as I said before in my somewhat Insolent opinion, is pure quackery. The sole exception is for real, documented cases of acute heavy metal poisoning that are known to respond to chelation, such as iron overload due to transfusion, aluminum overload due to hemodialysis, copper toxicity due to Wilson's disease, acute heavy metal toxicity, and a handful of other indications. Basically, chelation therapy involves infusing chemicals that can bind to metal ions and make them easier for the kidneys to excrete. The problem is, there is no good basic…
oracknows | March 10, 2013One of the strategies that Stanislaw Burzynski will undoubtedly use to "prove" in Eric Merola's new Stanislaw Burzynski movie that antineoplastons work in cancer will be to highlight "success stories." Last year, Burzynski apologists frequently pointed to a girl with an inoperable brain tumor named Amelia Saunders as a success story when the U.K. press widely featured her going to school in September but, very sadly, her family saw her tumor begin to progress again in December, ultimately resulting in her death about a month and a half ago. In the process, Burzynski did what he all too often…
oracknows | March 8, 2013So I finally made it to the Society of Surgical Oncology Annual Symposium. Thanks to the snowstorm that apparently wasn't (at least, I don't see any snow around), my arrival was delayed by a day, as all flights to the Washington, DC area were canceled on Wednesday. But I did finally get here, and, although I missed most of the first day, I did at least get to see a talk given by a friend of mine late in the day and I had a chance to hang out for a while with an old friend.
I also got the chance after I got back to my hotel room to be highly amused by a "response" to criticism from the author…
oracknows | March 7, 2013I'm not a big fan of Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA). That I don't much like CTCA should come as no surprise, given that this particular hospital chain distinguishes itself from other hospital chains by advertising its full body embrace of quackery, in particular "naturopathic oncology." At the same time as it's advertising its "integrative cancer care." It all sounds great on the surface, but anyone who understands exactly what "integrative medicine" is and how it basically represents the evolution of quackery will also understand that when you "integrate" quackery and…
oracknows | March 6, 2013I know I have quite a few readers in the Washington, DC area; so I thought I'd just take advantage of the prerogative of the blog to do a little pimping. (And what good is having a blog if you can't do a little shameless promotion every now and then?) A "very good friend" of mine will be in DC this weekend giving a talk forthe National Capital Area Skeptics. The talk will take place at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, VA on Saturday, March 9, 2013 at 1 PM. So if you're in the DC area and want to hear a familiar voice pontificate about quackademic medicine (and, really, what…
oracknows | March 5, 2013That didn't take long.
Earlier today I wrote about how Colorado Public TV (channel 12) has betrayed its public trust by airing movies promoting quackery and/or pseudoscience. The most recent example is its upcoming airing of the first Burzynski movie, a propaganda piece so blatantly one-sided and full of cherry picked information and conspiracy mongering that it's painful for anyone with two neurons to rub together to watch.
Well, Colorado PBS, Channel 12 has responded (click to embiggen):
Indeed. Colorado PBS must have incredible contempt for its viewers to think that such a transparent…
oracknows | March 4, 2013I'm running out of popcorn again.
I know I've been writing a lot about the latest internecine war among cranks. It's a battle royale whose first shot occurred when everybody's favorite Boy Wonder "reporter" betrayed his mentors with a missive published on a hive of scum and quackery even more wretched that the hive of scum and quackery at the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism, namely The Bolen Report. He even went so far as to publish private e-mails of prominent members of the antivaccine group SafeMinds. It didn't take long for SafeMinds to unleash a counterattack, joined by Dan Olmsted…
oracknows | March 3, 2013Over the weekend, as I was contemplating what to write about for today, I received a rather odd and unexpected e-mail. Indeed, it was with great surprise that I read this e-mail on Saturday morning, sent to the Burzynski Movie mailing list:
Dear Burzynski Movie Subscribers:
Major International Distribution Deal For
Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business, Part II:
We are pleased to announce that Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business, Part II has landed a major international distribution deal with one of America's top distribution companies.
We can't give out any specific details until…
oracknows | March 1, 2013I really hate to write this post, but I feel compelled. The reason I hate to write it is because someone I admire screwed up. The reason I feel compelled is because of my longstanding interest in World War II and Holocaust history, not to mention my longtime interest in refuting the lies of Holocaust deniers. I had meant to write about it the first time I came across it, but for some reason did not. I don't remember the reason, although it might very well be because of how much I respect the person who wrote it. Again, I don't remember, and today it really doesn't matter why. Whatever the…
oracknows | February 28, 2013The other day, I took note again of a rather amusing internecine war going on between various factions of antivaccine cranks. On the one side, spearheaded by everyone's favorite inept conspiracy theorist and bumbling epidemiologist wanna be, Jake Crosby, there are the true believers, who believe that the other side, the more "mainstream" antivaccine groups (such as SafeMinds) and elder statesmen (such as Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill) somehow shafted Jake's hero, the even more bumbling antivaccine "scientist" Brian Hooker out of a role testifying in front of Darryl Issa's last antivaccine…
oracknows | February 28, 2013Yesterday, I expressed my dismay at learning that what used to be a bastion of science-based medicine, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, is now peddling the quackery known as acupuncture to children, or, as I put it, "integrating" nonsense with science. Sadly, as I've written about all too often because I keep seeing it again and again, it's an all too common trend. Hospitals are increasingly embracing pseudoscience and quackery, laboring under the misguided belief that by doing so they are somehow "cutting edge"; that the patients really, really want it; and as a marketing tool. Although I…
oracknows | February 27, 2013Thanks to a winter storm that dumped a heapin' helpin' of heavy wet snow on us last night, we lost power before this post even got going. However, I did have a bit of time this morning to finish it up as a quickie (by my standards) before my laptop battery indicator started expressing its displeasure. Since it's a topic that doesn't really necessitate a long post anyway, it's a perfect fit for today, and I'll just put off what I was going to write about today until tomorrow. Or the day after if nothing else comes up between now and then that interests me more. You see, the power company is…